Discounts

The discount has killed the regular way of selling goods and services, the agressive promotions all year round make no sense and most of the time are not real. The percived savings a customer gets by “not paying full price” or “the deal they got” makes them buy even if that is just an artificial pricing. Part of the fault is the 2008 crisis but I think the most of it is marketers that didn’t know better on how to market their business other way than discounts.

Of course the problem is more complicated than that, but the habbit and triggers already have a place in our minds, we’re always looking for the % sign. The problem comes when the discounts no longer work, because if everyone does discounts and promotions all the time, what’s the real price the customer will ask?